


Fractured

by rickandmortygetschwifty



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Angst, Collab, Collaboration, Comic, Fanart, Happy Ending, I promise lol, M/M, Morty feels, POV switch, Rick feels, Second person POV, Soulmate AU, Soulmate AU where soulmates share pain, Whump, You Have Been Warned, angst like hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 18:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12348186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rickandmortygetschwifty/pseuds/rickandmortygetschwifty
Summary: Snapshots and insights into the life of one Rick Sanchez, as he waits literal decades for the arrival of an absent soulmate. As the years go by, the wounds and scars he had acquired never fully heal.





	1. The Innocence of Youth

**Author's Note:**

> This is a crosspost of a collab on tumblr done with the ever-so-lovely rnm-bin. They did the amazingly good comic that went with this fic! Holy friggin shit, their art is awesome and I'm not worthy @-@ Thank you for doing this with me!

* * *

 

For longer than you’ve known, you never truly understood what a soulmate was.

Your first memory was of your mother hovering over you, inspecting the reddening bruise that was blossoming over your knee. She was looking over at you in disapproval, tutting as she tried to hush your sobs.You couldn’t help the tears that ran down your cheeks as you cradled your leg and begged your mother to make it stop hurting.The pain you felt was unlike anything you experienced before. And so you cried and cried, hoping that your screams would drown out the unpleasant sensations.

Your mother simply picked you up, whispering sweet things into your ear as she bandaged you up.

“Oh, you poor little thing,” she cooed, flicking you playfully on the nose. “Rick, you need to be more careful, or you’ll make your soulmate sad too.

You were far too young to know what she meant by this simple saying. You looked at her in confusion, asking her what she meant by it.

She smiled, pleased that you wanted to know. “Your soulmate is the one person who’ll love you the most,” your mother replied. “The one person who’ll know you the best. They’ll be the one you share all your pain and secrets with, and they’ll share theirs with yours, my dear. Your soulmate will be the one closest to you in all the world.”

There was something oddly unsettling about this thought. You told her how yucky it made you feel, to share pain with someone else. _It was cruel,_ you had said, that there was this one person out there who was crying in pain just like you because they were unfortunate enough to be your soulmate.

Your mother simply laughed and said you’d understand when you were older.

* * *

 

But you never did, did you?

You were a young, impressionable child, still too careless about where you placed your feet or how fast you ran. In the course of your childhood, you accumulated numerous scratches, cuts, and bruises that you proudly wore like medallions all over your tiny body.You vividly remember the time you were picking at a particularly large scab absentmindedly. Your parents have tried to dissuade you from the behavior with little success.

“Ricky, stop that!” they had scolded. “Do you want to give your soulmate scars? You’ll hurt your soulmate if you keep picking at it!”

And you had silently wondered to yourself, continuing to pick at the scab away from the prying eyes of your parents, why you should care about some person whom you haven’t even met.

You wondered if your soulmate feels the same. Or if they cared more about you than you did for them. If they’d avoid pain because they worry about hurting you. If they loved a stranger so much that they’d grin through the pain and bear it.

Because you’ve never felt pain other than your own.

What your parents told you turned out to be a silly superstition, but it didn’t make you feel any less of a terrible person when you peeled away the scab with a sick sense of satisfaction.

* * *

 

You don’t know when exactly you realized it. You never knew when exactly you found out how different you were to all the happy, healthy, _normal_ kids. And maybe you’ll never figure it out; that moment you stopped hoping for the impossible and became the bitter, cynical man you now were.

But there were hints. Hints that clued you in to how broken you truly were. Like that one time you hid like the outcast you were at the mere mention of soulmates from your classmates, your heart clenching with envy as they happily recounted their experiences. One of them, his arm in a cast, was telling a tale of how they thought they felt the soothing touch of their soulmate while he was lying in pain from his broken arm. _They were telling me everything was okay,_ he had said, _and it felt like they were sharing the pain with me. They made it hurt a little less._

“I bet it was your soulmate!” his friend said excitedly.

“Yeah! I felt something like that last time I tripped–” another one added.

As your classmates continued to tell their stories, exclaiming excitedly about how they felt bursts of stinging sensations at random or sharp tingles that crawled up their leg when they least expected it, you looked at your bare arm. It dripped with blood from a recent accident involving a thornbush, still slick and wet and ever so _painful_ , yet you felt no loving touch of a soulmate.

 _Where are you?_ you silently asked your soulmate, wherever they may be. _Are you going to stop hiding from me?_

* * *

 

Your soulmate never showed themselves. After many years without a sign from your soulmate, you turned to other things to stem your pain.

Drinking, partying, sex, drugs. And when you’ve tired of that, you repeat the cycle again until you practically collapse from overexertion. Your friends worry about you, but one glare and a well-timed “fuck you”  is enough to get them to back off. Why the hell should they care anyways? You don’t have a soulmate. No reason to take care of your body if there was no other damn person who’d feel your pain. _You’re freer than they’d ever be,_ you try to convince yourself.

You ditch the friends who nag you too much about your lifestyle and start hanging out with people who don’t ask you too many questions. The kind of people who are too stoned or drunk to question why you, a man with genius levels of intelligence with much more important things to do than smoking a cigarette in a run-down crackhouse, would rather hang out with them. You don’t tell them it’s because you think they’re just as broken as you.

When you hear these people complain about soulbonds, you have to bite back a swear-filled rant about how these dickheads never deserved to have soulmates and how fucking lucky that their soulmates even bothered to make their presence known. You wanted to tell them how you’d endure a lifetime of agony just for one little sign from your soulmate.

But then the moment passes, and your friends move on to a harmless topic. You close your eyes and take another swig from your bottle, wondering how much more of this you could take.


	2. The Pain of Nothingness

* * *

 

You don’t know how many years of the mind-numbing agony you endured. But you did accept it eventually–that there was something _wrong_ with you, and fate had decided you never deserved a soulmate.

Accepting it didn’t make it hurt any less.

A few days after this realization saw you holing yourself up in your dorm room, paying no attention to your roommate as he banged angrily at your door and demanded to be let in. You didn’t care. You had no reason to care. Let them kick you out of the building. It was fucking _alright._

You were dirty and filthy and near-naked, stewing in the disgusting aroma of stale beer and dried vomit, almost a passive observer to your own self-destruction. You screamed yourself hoarse that night, demanding if your soulmate was too good to be bonded to a man who was beyond broken. Then you quieted when you realized that, yes. There was no one on Earth who deserved someone like you. They deserved better. You knew now. You’re _alright._

You didn’t feel like yourself as you smashed a bottle of vodka on your bedpost. It shatters into a thousand jagged pieces, the green-tinted glass shards seemingly menacing under the dim light of your dorm room. Everything’s _alright._

You picked up a large shard, staring at it unfeelingly, then proceeded to draw lines across your arms, long and deep, the flesh splitting apart like butter under a hot knife. Hot blood oozed out from the cuts, and your arm looked like a wreck, but you didn’t care. You barely felt the sting. And you had no soulmate who’d feel the pain anyways. If fate decided to rob you of one, it was goddamn _alright._

It was _alright._ You felt _alright_ . Everything is _alright._

The crushing, all-encompassing loneliness you felt that night was far more painful than the gashes you carved all over your body.

* * *

 

Time and age forced you to learn how to deal with your loneliness.

But then something happened to you.

Maybe it was the sheer exhaustion of trying to keep your distance from other people. Maybe it was because you had let your guard down after so many years of keeping your secret. Maybe it was how you two were pulled together; like the orbits of two stars that formed too close to each other. But one thing’s for sure, something utterly miraculous transpired. It was a turning point that changed your whole life.

You fell in love.

And she loved you back.

She was the most beautiful person in the world, and her name was Diane. She was ever so patient and kind, and she was there for you when you needed the comfort of another person. And for the first time in your life, you began to hope that the hole that your missing soulmate had left in you could be filled by this sweet girl. When you married Diane, and had a beautiful child together, you thought you had finally beaten fate. You found _happiness._

But everyone knows that stars that orbit too close eventually collide, and all good things must come to pass. When Diane leaves you passed-out drunk on your workbench, your scattered blueprints and diagrams ruined from the stains of your drying tears, you figured out that you’ve never really let go of the idea of finding your soulmate.

Diane knew you would leave her in a heartbeat if you ever found them.

* * *

 

It took the comfort of two unexpected friendships to pull you out of the abyss of depression.

You never planned for Birdperson and Squanchy to be your friends. They’re a thousand times more responsible than you, and if it wasn’t for them, you’d have been long dead from your carelessness. You’re definitely older than you were from your reckless college days, but that didn’t stop you from almost killing yourself on a near-daily basis to cover up your immense pain.

“Hey, that’s way too much, Rick!” Squanchy warned you as you snort up enough ground-up Kalaxian crystals to knock you out for a whole day. ‘Your soulmate would–”

“Fuck off, Squanchy!” you replied, snorting up even more of the pink powder out of sheer spite. Your two best friends gaped at you dumbfoundedly.

It wasn’t Squanchy’s fault you never told him about your soulmate. It wasn’t his fault he was just doing his job as a concerned friend. But his reminder still stung you harder than a wasp sting and hung around far longer than the killer headache you woke up with the next morning.

* * *

 

You became more apathetic and soulless with each passing year. A part of you dies with the crushed hopes of your soulmate’s appearance.

You and your friends stood at attention, saluting the army general as he nodded at you with approval. When the general peered at your data, he frowned and looked up at you. He asked if you would want to reconsider, saying that he would never force anyone with a soulmate to join the war effort. He knows how much it could impair your performance as a soldier, and also how inhumane it was to sever a soulbond.

“I don’t have one,” you said emotionlessly. You’ve said it too many times to be affected by it now.  

Your friends stared at you in concern, but you ignored their questions and walked ahead. No soulmate, no reason you should start caring about your life. You barely duck when the bullets start flying, whizzing by too close to your head.

 


	3. The Forgotten Bond

 

 

* * *

 

Over the next several years you learn to stop paying attention to that little voice at the back of your head that was still yearning for a soulmate.

But there’s little instances, like when you get a papercut from the edges of an old worn book or when you’re running from the Galactic Federation with a hand clapped over a gaping hole in your liver, when it’s too loud not to notice.

Only the sweet embrace of an early death is enough to quell that voice.

* * *

 

You had a bottomless well of patience when it came to your soulmate, but decades of bottling up all your emotions eventually caught up with you.

It was a straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. A hair trigger that made you lose control. A sequence of events, both harmless and significant, that had pushed you over the edge. It had toppled like dominoes into a well that filled up with all of your anger and anguish.

You were tired, you were drunk, and you had zero tolerance for bullshit that day. You were doing business with an asshole of a friend that you had met in one of your earlier adventures, and you honestly didn’t know why you had decided to agree to work with it on a joint project.

Glorbo the alien clicked its jaws at you as it asked a question it knew the answer to. “… Still haven’t found that soulmate of yours?” it mocked, shaking its head. “Give it up, Sanchez. You’re a human. You don’t have centuries to look for a soulmate. Why don’t you settle for a nice, young female and set those reproduction sacs to good use? Have a few larvae of your own?”

The uninvited memory of Diane and Beth, coupled with the thought of your absent soulmate was too much for you. Without a second thought, you wrapped your hands around the motherfucker’s neck and proceeded to strangle it.

You don’t remember what else happened, but it ended with you covered in bruises and sitting in the back of a police cruiser.

“Your soulmate would be so disappointed in you,” the policewoman muttered to Rick as she took Glorbo’s statement.

* * *

 

After years and years of monotonous radio silence, something peculiar happened.

You were sitting in a bar, chatting amicably with the bartender, when you’re suddenly struck with the feeling of your ribcage being hit by a sledgehammer. Your lungs felt like they were being set on fire. It was so sudden, and so painful, that you knocked over your glass of whiskey, the golden-yellow liquid spilling all over the counter. The bartender jerked back in annoyance, telling you that you’ve had too much to drink and that you should leave. You left the bar in confusion, wondering if you’ve eaten or inhaled something that could’ve caused the burning sensations in your chest.

Something had changed.

——————–

_Morty Smith._

That was the name your mother had given you. Your parents, a proud Beth and Jerry Smith, smiled tiredly as the doctor coaxed you out of your safe place in your mother’s body and into the world outside.

It was too bright, too noisy, too _different._ The faces of complete strangers looked back at you as you wiggled your tiny fingers in the air and searched for a way back into the comfortable and warm womb you’ve known all your life. Your unused lungs cried out from the abuse of the unfamiliar sensations of air filling it for the first time. As you took your painful first breath, you wailed as loud as you could.

You didn’t notice the double echo of pain that vibrated through a newly-formed bond.


	4. The Ignorance of the Separated

* * *

 

You might’ve easily forgotten about  the incident at the bar, if your own damn body didn’t constantly give you hell. Since that night at the bar, you’ve been constantly plagued with phantom sensations. You feel sharp stings across your skin like you’ve cut yourself accidentally, pangs of hunger even after you’ve just eaten, and sudden jolts of pain that made you wince and check yourself for any bruises. They never lingered, they never left any marks on your body, and happened damn near all times of the day.

You couldn’t understand what was happening to you. Maybe you were wrong, but… this pain didn’t feel like your own. Maybe it was fate, trying to tell you something about the soulbond.  Maybe it was mocking you by giving you these hallucinations of what your nonexistent soulbond might feel like. Maybe fate was horrified to see the wretched abomination you’ve become and was trying to finish you off by driving you insane. Or maybe it isn’t fate at all: you’re just a gullible moron who still believes in all those lies society fed to you about soulmates.

Whichever it was, you hated yourself more for it; for being a slave and an eternal optimist to the soulmate system; for buying into that flowery, romantic bullshit even when you clearly knew better; for having your life ruled by something you had no control over.

You don’t know how many times you’ve held a gun to your head, ready and willing to end it all, only to be stopped by an overpowering dread and a niggling conscience begging you not to pull the trigger.

You’ve always been such a fucking coward.

——————–

“Morty just has self-confidence issues,” many of the adults said when they puzzled over how shy and aloof you were.

Other people thought you needed a session with a child therapist to help you socialize. Your mother and father thought you needed some interaction with other children to help build your confidence. Your sister thought you were overreacting and just needed a push in the right direction.

Your childhood was rife with memories of feeling a kaleidoscope of emotions: anger, resignation, melancholy, defeat, and deep self-loathing. Every day left you drained and exhausted, and these nameless feelings often visited you without warning. They attacked you unrelentingly, at every waking moment, and never ceased to make you feel like shit.

~~And you’ve never told anyone this, but there were many times when you’ve felt like you wanted to kill yourself.~~

At least you could take comfort in imagining what your soulmate is up to. You’ve always been excited to meet the after your parents told you all about soulmates. You wonder what they’re doing whenever you feel a sting of pain that’s not your own, or when you hurt yourself and feel someone else through the soulbond.

Maybe they can help you fight back the loneliness and anguish you always feel.

* * *

 

Your first trip to the Citadel of Ricks did much to open your eyes to the multiverse, but also revealed how much of a shitty hand you’ve been dealt when it came to fate.

There were Ricks of all shapes, sizes, colors, races, creeds, nationalities, and even species. Some of them were alone, some of them were banded together in groups, Some of them were with aliens, some of them were with young prepubescent boys, some of them were with familiar faces that made you do a double take. No one spared you a second glance as you gawked at your surroundings, and why would they? You were a perfectly normal, ordinary, run-of-the-mill Rick.

You thought you were finally in a place with people who could empathize with you.

You get the chance to talk to some of these Ricks and get the shock of your life when they laugh in your face at the first mention of soulmates. Pseudoscientific bullshit, they said. They’ve run the numbers and concluded that the possibilities of a species evolving soulmates to be near zero. _No, soulmates and soulbonds don’t exist,_ the Ricks claimed, and if they did, they wanted nothing to do with them. So you never bring it up again, and move on in disappointment.

You do run across a Rick from a universe with soulmates, though, but when he mentioned that his soulmate was Diane, you quickly moved on. The mere mention of your ex-wife was a knife in the gut; a painful reminder of what could’ve been. Diane was never your soulmate, and she never will be. This Rick would never understand your stories.

This was when you realized that you were the only one in the multiverse who shared your pain and misery.

——————–

God, did you try to cheer yourself up. You really did.

Your parents gave you your beloved dog, Snuffles. You had wonderful and memorable birthdays. You always had toys to play with. Your sister, though annoying, looked out for you. You had a great childhood with a loving family.

But still you lie awake at night, hating yourself and everything you’d ever done. You cry yourself to sleep even when you had the best day of your life. And most of the time, you just felt…empty. Or broken. You don’t know. It feels like everything you do is pointless since life’s fucked you over anyway. Which is ridiculous, since you’ve had a great life and should have so much to live for.

You’re so tired. You just want it to stop.


	5. The Calm Before the Storm

* * *

 

_Both of you had suffered much in  your time apart, but it was not in vain. You learned much from your time apart._

_Looking back at these memories, you both realized how blinded you  were with your own pain, not even realizing they originated from a person more than half a multiverse away. When you finally met face to face, you could never have guessed the truth._

_And so you both let your first meeting pass without much comment._

* * *

 

Rick waited outside the front porch of the Smiths, ringing the doorbell for the third time in under a minute. No one answered. He looked down his papers, looking at a hurriedly scribbled address and a map with a street encircled in red ink. He glanced down at his watch. After a couple more minutes of ringing the doorbell, he turned to leave.

The front door opened in the nick of time and he was greeted with a face he didn’t think he would ever see again. Beth Smith instantly recognized Rick, wrapping her arms around him in a bone-crushing hug. His daughter cried tears of joy as she pleaded for him to stay.

Three more Smiths came to the front door to greet Rick. One was a teenage girl named Summer, asking her mother why she was crying. Another was a man named Jerry, eyeing Rick with suspicion. Another was a younger boy named Morty, who simply asked Rick who he was. Rick was invited into the house.

Rick’s integration into the Smith family’s lives was uneventful.

* * *

 

Rick and Morty should have seen it sooner. But habits are hard to break, and it’s never easy to see beyond your own pain. They remained blinded for a very long time.

But there were curious moments, though. Like that one time Morty woke up with a splitting headache, complaining to his mother about it while he tried to pack his bag for school. His mother had told him to just stay home and get some aspirin in the kitchen cabinets. Morty had passed by the living room, where Rick was sprawled out on the couch from a late-night session of partying.

“Y-y-you think you’ve got it bad, Morty?” Rick had said when he overheard Morty’s complaints. “I’m so hungover, my head feels like it’s beiUUURPng cracked open like a coconut!”

Then there was the time when Morty accidentally bit the inside of his cheek while he was shovelling food into his mouth. It stung hard, and he had to stop eating to take a minute to let the pain fade. Curiously, Rick had slapped a hand to his face at the same time Morty did.

“Looks like your grandpa did, too,”  Beth and Jerry had chuckled when Morty explained that he had bit his cheek. “Slow down, both of you.”

And there was this time when Rick felt the familiar ache of his back plague him again after a grueling adventure. As they sat in the cramped confines of the ship, he failed to notice Morty’s discomfort. Rick had sat in the driver’s seat, complaining away about his own back and bickering with Morty when the boy started to tease and insult him.

All these little moments that they were given never made them suspicious. Perhaps Rick and Morty never put two and two together because they subconsciously knew the truth would terrify them. Perhaps they never gave them a second thought because the truth was too absurd to believe. Perhaps they were merely unobservant.

But these moments continued to build up to an event with a startling revelation.


	6. The Revelation

* * *

 

“RUN, MORTY!”

Rick ran as fast as his legs could carry him, shouting back to Morty as the boy struggled to keep up. They had only three seconds before the bomb detonated. Three short seconds before everything went to shit. The safety of their spaceship seemed like miles away as they sprinted towards it.

Rick was yards ahead of Morty when it happened. His grandson tripped on a stray branch on the ground, sending the boy sprawling face-first on the ground. Rick barely had time to register the sharp pain that spread out over his chest when the bomb detonated.

BOOM!

Their proximity to the bomb made the explosion seem louder than a hundred firecrackers going off and hotter than the surface of the sun. Rick was thrown off his feet from the force of the blast, landing in a ditch several feet away. Rick’s vision filled with a bright light that seared his eyes and left him blinking away spots. Bright sparks of red and orange followed thick clouds of dark smoke, engulfing an area twice the size of a football field. When the smoke cleared and the noise died down, Rick coughed wetly and sat up, trying to clear his lungs of the poisonous black fumes.

Rick was in agony. His skin felt like it was on fire, his bones felt like they were all broken, and he was fairly sure he had taken severe damage to his organs, because he felt like they were being scrambled by an egg beater.  His arms were being stabbed with hundreds of needles with each tiny movement and his knees sent a jolt of pain straight up the spine when he shakily got up. It took everything in Rick not to pass out from the pain.

He inspected himself for any injuries, wondering why he didn’t have any bruises or visible injuries. Shouldn’t pain this intense leave anything on his body? But Rick didn’t have the luxury of wondering for too long, because his eyes slid onto Morty.

His grandson was lying in a pool of his own blood, his skin mottled with several bruises. Morty’s skin was bright red and his shirt was charred and tattered, the fabric still smoking and the stench of charred flesh invading Rick’s nostrils. Morty was limp and unmoving, and his limbs were bent and twisted at odd angles. If the boy hadn’t clearly been knocked unconscious, he would’ve no doubt been in massive pain.

Rick was frozen in shock as the puzzle pieces snapped into place. No blood on his own body. Morty, clearly decorated in the exact same injuries that would’ve been the cause of Rick’s agony. All those strange memories of him and Morty. Rick hearing radio silence from his soulmate for so many years.

Rick walked up to Morty, ignoring his own pain as he sank to his knees and cradled the boy’s head. Rick kissed him lightly on the forehead, crying, until he heard the weak exhales of the other’s breathing. Rick wiped the tears from his eyes.

Morty was still alive. Heart pounding, Rick picked him up, making his slow way to the spaceship. He had to endure the pain for Morty. He could still save his grandson.

He hoped he still had time to tell his soulmate he loved him.


	7. The Beginning

* * *

 

Morty blinked open his eyes, sitting up and rubbing his face. Where was he? A quick customary check quickly confirmed he was in the hospital. Plain white room, sanitized smell, bright lights, the hospital bed he woke up in, all check. All he needed to do now was remember what got him there.

Morty’s eyes were drawn to the sound of someone sobbing quietly. His eyes land on a shock of familiar blue hair, its owner slumped over Morty’s bed in what was definitely not a restful sleep. Dried tears stained Morty’s blankets, big, pearly drops running down Rick’s face onto the mattress.

“M-m-morty…” his grandfather seemed to be mumbling in his sleep. Morty reached out to run his hand through Rick’s spiky locks, trying to soothe Rick.

Morty’s hand flinched away as he was suddenly barraged with a terrifyingly familiar sense of self-loathing and sorrow. The waves of pain and grief were more powerful than anything he’s ever felt before, and it happened at the same time Morty’s hand had brushed over Rick’s head. His grandfather clenched his hand and sniffled again.

“I’m sorry, please… don’t take him away…”

Rick’s statement flicked on a lightbulb in Morty’s head.

Morty knew now. It all made too much sense for him. Those waves of pain and despair he felt all his life, that crushing loneliness and defeat that plagued him for years. The hints he’d received from fate and missed because of his blindness. It could really have only come from one man. A man he now knew better than anyone else. A man who he knew had so much pain in his heart. The man Morty called his grandfather.

What was he supposed to do with this revelation?

He had a choice. Rick had given him so much pain and suffering. For years, Morty had thought there was something wrong with him. For years he had thought he was broken. And now Morty knew who had given him so much pain. The one person who had made him want to dive into the gaping maw of a black hole more times than he could count. Now was his chance to tell his grandfather to fuck off; to hurt him back with pain several times worse. To hurt him until the man felt all the pain he had given Morty for years.

Or maybe he could learn to forget what Rick had done to him. To be a better person. To build a new start.

Morty deliberated for a few minutes, his hand poised either to strike Rick or to caress him. Instead, he dropped his hand, leaning closer to whisper in Rick’s ear.

“I forgive you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like, check out the [original tumblr post](https://rnm-bin.tumblr.com/post/166259592056/heres-the-soulmateau-collab) of this collab! Also drop by rnm-bin's blog [HERE](https://rnm-bin.tumblr.com/) and mine [HERE](https://rickandmortygetschwifty.tumblr.com/) if you want to have a chat with us! Don't worry, we don't bite~


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